The feedstock for the ethanol will be municipal solid waste, as well as wood residues from forest and agricultural activities. The company's process can sort household trash, diverting material that can be recycled and processing the rest into ethanol, a liquid fuel blended with gasoline.
We all know by now that the US needs a new source of fuel: renewable, non-polluting, free of ties to foreign dictators... We also know that our landfills are so full that unless we come up with a trash reduction/recycling plan, we'll be buried in it very soon.
This new turn of events, trash into ethanol, gives an answer to the claim by some scientists and environmentalists that it takes more energy to make ethanol from corn than you get back in fuel savings.
In a recent paper in the journal Natural Resources Research, David Pimentel, an ecology professor at Cornell U, calculates that it takes the energy equivalent of 271 gallons os gasoline to grow 2.47 acres of corn. Part of that energy is for tractor fuel, but the biggest use is for manufacturing nitrogen fertilizers, mandatory for high yield corn growing. More of that energy is needed to turn the corn into fuel. (Other studies disagree). The only reason it can be produced affordably, Pimentel says, is because the government is subsidizing production to the tune of $3 billion/year. If this trend of existing and anticipated policy incentives in support of ethanol continue, a key question raises: Where will ethanol producers get the corn needed to increase their output?. How the market adapts to this increased demand is likely to be one of the major developments of the early 21st century in US agriculture. Some will come from imports, and also through higher corn outputs from farmers.
Unfortunately corn is an environmentally unfriendly cop. It contributes more to soil erosion than do other crops, and heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers contaminate groundwater, creeks & rivers.
So, in short, TRASH TO ETHANOL, what a grand idea!
